late to stop now."
"It is, isn't it?" Arkadin took out a pack of Turkish cigarettes and offered one to the colonel.
"I'm trying to cut down on my bad habits."
"A futile preoccupation."
"Say that when you have high blood pressure."
Arkadin lit up, put the pack away, and took a deep drag. As the smoke drifted out of his nostrils, he said, "Melor Bukin, your boss, reports to Maslov."
Karpov's eyes blazed. "You shit, are you fucking with me again?"
Without a word Arkadin dug out the plastic bag he'd stowed in the bottom of the ice chest, zipped it open, and handed over the contents. Then he added several pieces of driftwood to the fire, which was waning.
Karpov moved a bit nearer to the fire in order to have a better look. Arkadin had handed him one of those cheap cell phones bought in any convenience store, a burner, which meant its calls couldn't be traced. He thumbed it on.
"Audio and video," Arkadin said as he used a stick to better arrange the wood. Planning for this day or one like it, he had used this cell to clandestinely record certain meetings between Maslov and Bukin that he'd attended. He knew there would be no doubt in the colonel's mind when he finished viewing the evidence.
At length, Karpov looked bleakly up from the tiny screen. "I'll need to keep this."
Arkadin waved a hand. "All part of the service."
Somewhere far off, the drone of a small plane came to them, a sound no more significant than a mosquito's whine.
"How many more?" Karpov asked.
"I know of two - their names are in the phone's directory - but there may be more. I'm afraid you're going to have to ask your boss."
Karpov's brow furrowed. "That won't be easy."
"Even with this evidence?"
Karpov sighed. "I'm going to have to take him by surprise, cut him off completely before he has a chance to contact anyone."
"Chancy," Arkadin said. "On the other hand, if you go to President Imov with the evidence he'll be so outraged he's sure to let you do whatever you want with Bukin."
Karpov appeared to be considering this approach. Good. Arkadin smiled inwardly. Melor Bukin had risen up through the apparatchik ranks mainly because of the president, before he'd been chosen by Viktor Cherkesov, the head of FSB-2. Inside the Kremlin a war was being waged between Cherkesov and the FSB's Nikolai Patrushev, a well-known disciple of Imov's. Cherkesov had built a formidable power base without the president's patronage. Arkadin had his own reason for wanting Bukin disgraced. When Karpov threw Bukin in prison, his mentor, Cherkesov, would not be far behind. Cherkesov was the one thorn in his side he hadn't been able to extricate, but now Karpov would take care of that for him.
Yet he had no time to gloat. His restless mind had already turned to more personal matters. Namely, the various routes he might take to avenge himself on Karpov for holding a knife to his throat. His mind was already afire with visions of slitting the colonel's throat with his own razor blade.
Chapter Ten
MOIRA AND JALAL Essai sat together in the temporary quarters of his DC hotel suite. Between them were Essai's netbook and the netbook that Moira had bought the day before, one she knew was absolutely clean. She had already souped it up far beyond its original specs.
She was going to ask him how to get started, because she had to assume that all her systems had been compromised, but she needn't have bothered. As it turned out he had a lot of information about the laptop, all of which he shared with her. Latterly it had fallen into the hands of Gustavo Moreno, a Colombian drug lord living in the outskirts of Mexico City. Moreno had been killed some months ago when his compound had been raided by a party of officers disguised as Russian oilmen.
"The raiding party was headed by Colonel Boris Karpov," Essai said.
Curious, Moira thought. But then she knew how small and insular this world was. She knew about the colonel from Bourne; they were friends, as much as two people like that could be friends.
"So Karpov has the laptop."
"Unfortunately, no," Essai said. "The laptop was taken from Moreno's compound, by one of his own people, sometime before the raid."
"One of his own people who was obviously working for who - a rival?"
"Possibly," Essai said. "I don't know."
"What's the thief's name?"
"Name, photo, everything." Essai turned the laptop's screen toward her and brought up the image.